Wellness after Illness shows me my Wellness

Kai and I have been reading Frost out loud. Reading poetry with this child renews poetry's influence on me. Having never read Frost, Kai reads without prejudice or opinion. He reads innocently hardly with a past or a future. Each word is new to him.

Astrometaphysical
by Robert Frost

Lord, I have loved Your sky,
Be it said against or for me,
Have loved it clear and high,
Or low and stormy;

Till I have reeled and stumbled
From looking up too much,
And fallen and been humbled
To wear a crutch.

My love for every Heaven
O'er wish You, Lord, have lorded,
From number One to Seven,
Should be rewarded.

It may not give me hope
That when I am translated
My scalp will in the cope
Be constellated.

But if that seems to tend
To my undue renown,
At least it ought
to send Me up, not down.

And when we continue reading from an Anthology of Love poems, he doesn't wince at any overly sentimental, in my view, line. He simply reads.

I don't remember what's it's like to read without prejudice or opinion. I tend to turn away from what seems too difficult or complicated to read or understand. I quit short stories when their complexity mirrors my life's own complexity. Move on to the next one hoping for simplicity or staccato or limited viewpoints.

I've spent four days 'in bed' having contracted some cold or something or other. My system down, I got off the merry go round. The first three days I resisted getting off, but today has held me close to bed and the rain made sure to lull me down to rest. I am grateful to my friends who have supported me being sick and getting well. You can't change sickness to wellness overnight and you can't wish it away either. I've been sick and it's only this afternoon as I am fully on the mend that I feel like myself again.



It's this way:

The birds eat from the fence, seed, so provided with love and ache, the way he thinks of them and cares for them from the inside of himself. The rain is wet outside giving the grayness a wetness too. And then there it is: feeling more like myself. Standing downstairs, apart from my bed, powerful, moments ago in the kitchen, looking out the window, watching these bird eat his seed, thinking of my dinner and realizing I wasn't carrying the burden of being sick so heavily. I felt more like me. Well. Not quite fully, but on the mend.

Cheryl called it the upswing.

I noticed how nice it is to have gotten off the merry go round this whole day. I haven't done anything like I do when I am well, and being sick has me realize how well I am doing when I am not sick. How fun is that!!!???

And all I got to read short stories, (here's the school by donald barthelme) poetry, and baking blogs, this being my favorite, smitten kitchen (you won't believe her photography, especially the granola bar recipe).

I got to settle into the astrometaphysical upside of being down. Thanks God.

Pleasures, Sorrows

Below is a quotation from a book ( The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work by Alain de Botton ) I'm reading with Kai, one of the students I tutor.

"I left Symons's office company newly aware of the unthinking cruelty discreetly coiled within the magnanimous bourgeois assurance that everyone can discover happiness through work and love. It isn't that these two entities are invariably incapable of delivering fullfilment, only that they almost never do so. And when an exception is misrepresented as a rule, our individual misfortunes, instead of seeming to us quasi-inevitable aspects of life, will weigh down on us like particular curses. In denying the natural place reserved for longing and error in the human lot, the bourgeois ideology denies us the possibility of collective consolation for our fractious marriages and our unexploited ambitions, and condemns us instead to solitary feelings of shame and persecution for having stubbornly failed to become who we are."

It's a book about eight difference professions and the characteristics, descriptions and actualities of such a job. It's cool. Kai is imaging new possibilities for himself instead of being beleaguered by math problems.

1 poem I wrote as a Poet :: I'm quiet sure there was pleasure and sorrow while writing it.
Sheila didn’t want to die on Thursdays anymore.
She wouldn’t buy paper towels if that would get her off the hook.
She knew their effects on chickens.
They were squished already.
No one heard them anymore.
And no one cleaned up behind them.
They were alone in a world that ate them all up.
Wednesdays enlivened her to the future, so you couldn’t count on them.
Sheila likened the mid week to bacon, full of fat and juice and crispness that grounded her body in death.
She knew her kids well by that day.
Still no one cleaned up behind them and her husband laid waiting for her still.
She couldn’t get out alive so instead she wrote fiction and listened to the harmonica her neighbor played on Friday mornings before his gigs that evening.
In dark bars where she knew her longings could never be quenched.
She wallowed in the dark enough and grew silent late at night checking her locked doors.

What do you do in the hope of full pleasure no sorrow?

Eliot and Williams evoke Spring

I'm not a scholar but I admire them. Their ability to relate one thing to something else surpasses stimulus response thinking and weighing that day to day life demands. Scholars think deeply and compare unlike things finding in them the connection, the connectivity between the material and the abstract.

My favorite novel is Middlemarch by George Eliot. Published in 1874 it was Eliot's seventh novel. It impacted literature everywhere. Every year, it is the number one book in England, while two other classics, Jane Eyre and Pride and Prejudice switch positions for second and third place year after year.

Zadie Smith in her book Changing My Mind writes about Eliot's grand feat in Middlemarch: "What is universal and timeless in literature is need ---we continue to need novelists who seem to know and feel, and who move between these two modes of operation with wondrous fluidity. In Middlemarch love enables knowledge. Love is a kind of knowledge. It's love that enables [Fred] to feel another's pain as if it were his own. For Eliot, in the absence of God, all our moral tests must take place on this earth and have their rewards and punishments here. We are one another's lesson, one another's duty. Middlemarch is a dazzling dramatization of earthly human striving,...satisfaction here, like all the satisfactions Middlemarch offers, is not transcendental, but of the earth. Eliot has replaced metaphysics with human relationships. In doing this she took from ...metaphysics...what she wanted and left what she couldn't use. To make it work, she utilized a cast of saints and princes but also fools and criminals, and every shade of human in between."

If you want a book that intoxicates and nurtures, read Middlemarch....it may take you from now til summer, but that's what spring is for. ...bursting, blossoming, renewing your big project self.

Here's a poem foreshadowing Spring:

This Is Just to Say

by William Carlos Williams

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

& these words evoke newness, too:

"By taking the time each day to check in with ourselves, we begin to rediscover the voice of our instincts, and this is the path to taking charge of our health. By developing daily and seasonal patterns and rhythms based on adding simple drinks, breakfast routines, home food stocks, silence, meditation, and stretching, we can more easily monitor the voice of the body and discover optimal health." Sean Kelly

invitation

invitation |ˌinviˈtā sh ən| noun
a written or verbal request inviting someone to go somewhere or to do something : a wedding invitation.
• the action of inviting someone to go somewhere or to do something : a club with membership by invitation only | an herb garden where guests can go only at the invitation of the chef.
• [in sing. ] a situation or action that tempts someone to do something or makes a particular outcome likely : tactics like those of the colonel would have been an invitation to disaster.
ORIGIN late Middle English : from French, or from Latin invitatio(n-),
from invitare (see invite ).
Thesaurus
invitation noun
1 an invitation to dinner request to attend, call, summons; offer; card, note; informal invite.
2 an open door is an invitation to encouragement, provocation, temptation, lure, magnet, bait, enticement, attraction, allure; informal come-on.
Please consider buying some Granola.

Home again, Heart again

home wherever you go
heart wherever you go

home is where the heart is wherever you go

if you look closely, through what protects the heart, you can see the heart of a person wherever you go

look! the ribs are protecting the heart
look! you can see the heart

new orleans is wonderful
asheville is wonderful
both are home

home is where my heart is everywhere i go

beware the underdog

Who Dat?

I love the Saints. Superbowl winners. Representin' NOLA.

I love who they are as a team, those Saints. Love what they've given to the people of New Orleans. Love how they played last night and who they were while they won. Even enjoyed myself while watching them play.

Geaux Saints!

HA....
underdog |ˈəndərˌdôg; -ˌdäg|
noun
a competitor thought to have little chance of winning a fight or contest.
• a person who has little status in society
• with reference to the beaten dog in a dogfight.
• yesterday's underdog is today's champion long shot, dark horse, weaker one, little guy, David; downtrodden, victim, loser, fall guy.

Underdogs no more. They are now the Top Dogs for a Year. Swell with pride New Orleans, swell.

Who Dat?

New Orleans nicknames include "The Big Easy" & "The City that Care Forgot" ... Amen! Both true.....There's no where I'd rather be sometimes, eatin' a po-boy, a beignet, a king cake; walkin' the Quarter, Audubon Park or the neighborhoods; listenin' to the jazz, the blues, the soul; with my grandmother, an old friend, a familiar stranger.

I watched the game mesmerized and full of energy (hoopin and hollerin'....lettin' myself express the thrill) by the Saints' continued creation of the game. They commanded attention; they played their own game, their own way.....from an on-side kick, to a two point play post-touchdown, to a beautifully smooth interception.

Who Dat?

The Saints played independently of the Colts tactics and plays. They never cowered; they gained confidence play by play, quarter by quarter, point by point. They were sensational!

And if that isn't representing New Orleans I don't know what is.

In fact, I believe their game might well stand as a model for how to win, how to live, how to believe in yourself. Since Katrina that's what New Orleans has done. Since FEMA let my city down, the people of New Orleans have come together playing the game of life. Since the levees broke, nothing's been the same and the years past underdog, over-beaten Saints are no longer who they were. They are now who they are.....Winners.

As ace a player as the Colts' quarterback is, and there's no doubt he's preeminent, and as top-ranking as his team is, the Saints surpassed their game and their professionalism throughout the game.

I say WHO DAT? to that and from now on Beware the Underdog.

Ode to Hera

Dogs, dogs, dogs, dogs, dogs. We love them, and they love us. Gods and Goddesses some say, these animals.

Years ago, I found a dog, she found me, and eventually this dog found her way to my Mother who named her Hera. For almost thirteen years, Hera and my Mother have been inseparable. Their independent spirits, their love of life, their generosity and willingness to love has inspired many friends and all our family. Hera's eyes sparkle with life. Her coat of black and white, her neck often tied with a red bandana illuminated a zest for living, eating, sleeping, napping, scratching at the door, running the land at 500 West Beach, chasing vapor trails, barking at thunder, howling with fire engines. . Hera, solid body of a female dog, kept us at her beckoning; we found, and my Mother especially found, there was nothing you wouldn't do for Hera. So we did.

I remember Mom scrambling Hera eggs; fixing hot dogs; bringing home delectable doggy bags for her. Hera stayed with Martha when Mom went out of town. Martha's kennel was several acres for dogs to sniff and dig and play in packs as they do. Martha loved her as well as we did; she often kept Opera playing in the kennel for the dogs.

Hera nursed me back to the living when I was going through tough times years ago. We walked the beach in rhythm, Hera often way in front of me and then turning her head with patience, slowing down for me to catch up. My sister Tina got down on the floor more than anyone else to be near and as close as possible to Hera. Living out of town, the hardest part of going back home for Tina was leaving Hera. Tina on all fours with Hera is a familiar site in my mind's eye. That Tina J loves Hera. She would flirt with and coax Hera to have our pup at the end of her bed.

If you know my Mother, you know Hera, and so many of my Mother's friends, my Grandmother and others have loved and lived through the beauty of Hera.

But today my Mom and Martyn brought Hera to the beach in Pass Christian for her final farewell. The trio walked the beach, touched the waves, felt the horizon, sought the smells of the Gulf, the intricate niches of other beings ever present. This Hera's favorite adventure, the beach, the freedom, all out running and play. This the life she loved. For about a year, despite excellent internal health, great heart and kidney functioning, Hera's physical health deteriorated such that my Mother reached the point of no return, deciding with great Respect for this proud and stoic dog, to release her back into the source from which she came.

Hera, my Mother's heart and body and mind and by way of their relating and love Our family's sweet Hera dog is now laid to rest.

So this writing is for Hera and as Isak Dinesen said of Denys Finchhatten, "We loved her well. She was not ours; she was not mine." Fare thee well, Hoopie.

I share some stories we have shared with each other today.

Mom writes: "My Miss Hera is asleep after yet another romp on the beach at 500 West beach! She is chasing vapor trails and the birds in her own pain-free Paradise. She will be missed by her many friends of many flocks and tribes. Hera was trusting of my judgement until the End and I will so miss her constancy, loyalty and unflagging love. I already miss the love in her eyes that said so much in dog-speak. I know that she loved each of you for your warm affection and understanding and your pats and sweet words of affection. Thank you each one for being a part of Hera's life and specially for sharing Pass Christian with her and us all. Love, Chris

And Mom's sister Cynthia wrote this "Ode to Hera"

The world has been a better place because Hera is in it. Animals have an innate ability to love because they don't have obstacles that block their love like fear or worry as we humans do. They can and do love us unconditionally. They bring us such joy and wonder. They know when we are sick and sit next to us and wait. They are there when we come home from work or play and it's like the first time they ever saw us all over again. They run to us with joy and love in their eyes, and lick us and jump on us. They love us that much even when we think we don't deserve such love they love us anyway and always.

Hera, to me, is the metaphor for paradise because that is where I met her. In Pass Christian, Mississippi I met Hera. She is so beautiful and wise, fun and so loving all at the same time. She barked at the sky and the sea and she swam in the water with me. I got to take her for walks on the lovely gulf coast which was her home. She was born there and she oozed with the spirit of that place, that magical, warm, sunny, home. Christine's home in Pass Christian was my paradise that I came to when my world got too much and I swam, and ate fish and shrimp and floated in the pool in the sun. And, there was Hera with me: a part of my magical experience where the outside world stopped and paradise began. I can see her there by the pool running for the ball that Christine threw and drinking from the water hose. I remember she loved that water and needed it too. She is a part of that gulf coast earth.

Hera made me feel safe there too. She barked at noises and was a great protector. Throughout the years I have loved Hera as she has loved me. She is a guardian angel of mine and many many others. And we all need guardian angels like Hera in our lives to lift us up and comfort us. I know that she will always be with me and love and protect me for that is what guardian angels do.

Thank your God for Hera. She has loved so many. And from her love we will carry on.

With love from your sister,
Cynthia

Here's a favorite image, Tina with Hera

And Beau reminds us to "Hang tough.....Seamus and Binker and Leda and Baby Cakes are all running pardners with Hera now!"

Beautiful Hera



















Now laid to rest, Hera returns to the Earth and the spirit world..........